SOME early-morning exercise on the north coast turned into a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock film after an unprovoked attack by a bird of prey.
Felicity Mason was walking at Bonne Nuit when a bird swooped and pecked the top of her head, drawing blood and leading to treatment at the Emergency Department.
The incident has been reported to St John’s Parish Hall, with Mrs Mason suggesting that signs should be erected in the area to warn of the risk of an attack.
Mrs Mason, who was given a tetanus injection, said staff at the Emergency Department had treated another Islander the previous week after a similar attack.
She said the attack had taken place while she was on a regular morning route near her home in St John, which sees her run down from the car park at Les Platons and then walk back up the hill at Bonne Nuit.
Mick Dryden, chairman of the ornithology section of the Société Jersiaise, said that such an incident was very rare.
“I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I don’t ever recall an attack like this on a human before,” he said. “We get attacks by herring gulls and occasionally terns, but not by birds of prey.”
Mr Dryden said he believed the attack was likely to have resulted from Mrs Mason having inadvertently walked close to a nest during the breeding season.
“It’s normal for a bird to defend its nest, but not to attack like this,” he said. “It’s not likely to be a problem for long, with young birds about to fledge, but it might be a good idea to put some signs up.”
The bird may have been a sparrowhawk, Mr Dryden added, although Mrs Mason said she believed it was a falcon.
The JEP has asked parish officials in St John whether any action will be taken as a result of what happened.
In 1963 Alfred Hitchcock released The Birds, a horror-thriller film loosely based on the 1952 short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. The film focuses on a series of sudden and unexplained violent bird attacks on the people of Bodega Bay, California.
